Manufacturers of wire, of necessity, have found packaging the finished product to be particularly important from the standpoint of the end user. Furthermore, the packaging is important to the manufacturer to reduce costs and time in preparing the product for shipment. Wire is normally shipped in a coil form and in many applications is shipped on a core support to facilitate use by the consumer. Particular applications require core wound coiled wire to be installed on a machine where the wire is drawn off for use in a subsequent manufacturing product process.
Present packaging of wire reels of a core support, particularly cardboard core supports, requires the use of four of five tie bands wound about the finished coil of wire. The use of wire tie bands in the packaging of wire coils requires additional labor by the packager or manufacturer of the wire to place the bands on the coil, and also requires additional time of the consumer to remove the ties. Further, the tie bands are expended thus increasing costs.
The time expended in placing tie bands about a coil of wire and removing the tie bands may be avoided by the use of reels with end pieces to form a spool which permit the packager to affix the start and the end of the wire to the reel structure itself. Such spool type reels eliminate the need for wire tie bands; however, these reels are initially more expensive and if reused to lower the cost, require a great deal of waste space in storage.
Accordingly, this invention is a wire reel which is in spool like form to overcome the disabilities of tie retained wire reels and has core side pieces which may be disassociated from the core of the reel to reduce storage requirements both before use and after use. The unique design of the wire reel disclosed herein allows the packager of wire to assemble the components by hand at the time winding. Placing the assembled reel on the wire winding machine with its outwardly extending projections permits bending the start and the end of the wire wound on the reel around one of the projections to retain the wire on the reel. The user is not burdened by wire tie bands and upon expenditure of all the wire wound on the reel, the user may disassemble the reel for reuse.